


A Call to Arms

by starry_eyed_maiden



Category: The Iron Druid Chronicles - Kevin Hearne
Genre: Colorado shows up too, Gods, Healing, I love oberon, Nudity, Talking Animals, Tattoos, after scourged, same with granuaile and flidais, they talk about ogma but he isn't really there
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-06
Updated: 2018-05-06
Packaged: 2019-05-03 01:55:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,988
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14558316
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/starry_eyed_maiden/pseuds/starry_eyed_maiden
Summary: It's been a year since Ragnarok and Atticus has been waiting for Ogma in Tasmania. Old gods, a new limb, a new purpose. Oddly, no mention of sausages. (Follows Scourged)





	A Call to Arms

I flexed my new fingers and curled the bicep of my new arm. I grinned.

Ogma had fulfilled his debt and left without a word. I couldn’t have uttered a thank you before the bound tree whisked him back to Tír na nÓg. I probably would have been more eloquent anyway.

Tír na nÓg! I hadn’t visited, hadn’t shifted a single plane, in over a year while I sat in Tasmania and waited, unsure how long Ogma would draw out his task, delay his debt. It felt longer than the centuries I’d avoided it, hiding from Aenghus Óg. I winced at the bare skin on the back of my hand. No shifting yet. My new elbow itched. 

<Atticus.> Oberon’s voice entered my mind. <There’s a crow over here and it doesn’t smell like a crow.> Starbuck barked once, but Oberon must have told him to be quiet, because he didn’t make another sound.

A visitor. I sighed and stumbled out of the tent where, judging by the sunlight, I’d slept for several hours after the exhaustion from Ogma’s bindings set in. I found Oberon there, rolled onto his back with the Morrigan rubbing his belly. Starbuck lingered in the background—he still hadn’t gotten used to her visits over the last year. I got my smile under control a fraction of a second before she looked up at me.

“Siodhachan. It is good to see you whole again. Ogma found Miach’s shade several months ago. I’d wondered when he would return to you.” Her gaze lingered on my arm. “Though perhaps not completely whole, without your tattoos.” 

I looked at my arm as well, turning my hand back and forth, taking in every inch of bare skin. I hadn’t seen this in over two thousand years. Now, I was more used to being armless than tattooless. 

I trusted the Morrigan more than most, but I knew enough to choose my words carefully with any member of the Tuatha Dé Danann. “Ogma did an excellent job.”

The Morrigan snorted. “He took his ‘sweet time’, I believe is the phrase. Fulfilling his debt was the bare minimum.” 

I laughed; the translation of any English idiom into Old Irish was always a bit jarring. “He repaid his debts, and I can ask for no more.” 

The Morrigan came as close to beaming as the Chooser of the Slain could hope to; she’d been working on her jokes in our recent visits. “You can ask no more of Ogma, perhaps, but from others, you yet must. A year ago, when Loki fell and Ragnarok was thwarted, Brighid granted you a boon, if I’m not mistaken. It is time for her to honour her word—Gaia needs her Iron Druid once more.” 

“I haven’t heard much from her lately. I’ve talked to Tasmania; Owen is busy with his grove and Granuaile doesn’t want to be anywhere near me, but they’ve been dealing with any post-Ragnarok flare-ups just fine. Tasmania has only been directing me to the Tasmanian devils that still need healing and Oberon has been helping me track down the last of the ghosts.” 

The Morrigan shook her head. “The elementals have not been in contact with you because you cannot shift planes or shapeshift, and so you are cannot give Gaia what she needs. But there is much to be done.” She rose from where she sat next to Oberon. “The world, Gaia, she needs your wisdom, Siodhachan. Owen is a great druid, be he does not possess your experience, and, as you say, he has his grove to care for. And last I spoke to him, his lover and her pack still do not tolerate your presence, arm or no. Gaia needs all the druids she can get, especially when the three in existence cannot be expected to work together.”

She didn’t need to say more. It was no secret that the wolves had banished me, but very few knew why Granuaile wouldn’t be on the same continent as me. “I will request Brighid’s presence, but I cannot know when she will come, or when she will have time to complete the binding.” My new arm ached, for the sting of the thorn, to feel the touch of Gaia once more.

“I will pay her a visit. She is still concerned with the power struggle that the losses in battle brought to Tír na nÓg, but she of all beings will understand the importance of this, and the urgency. Gaia still reaches us, in Tír na nÓg and beyond.” With that, where a woman stood one instant there flapped a crow; it rose into the sky and the Morrigan was gone once more. 

Oberon rolled over and stood up. <I like your new arm! Now I can get twice the scratches!> He came over and sniffed it. Starbuck followed him.

“That’s right, buddy.” And I put my new arm to good use and I waited.

 

***

 

It was only a few days later, as we were returning from a den of infected Tasmanian devils, when Oberon warned me. <There’s a lady coming!> 

Brighid appeared, dressed in unassuming leathers and looking, for the first time in the short time I’d known her personally, utterly exhausted. “Siodhachan—” She stopped and stared at my arm. Like me, and like the Morrigan, it had been a long time since she’d seen a druid without tattoos. 

“Sorry.” I shrugged. There wasn’t much else to say. 

She cleared her throat. “It’s good to see you, and to see your arm. Much damage as been done, but it is good to see that some of it can be healed. Let us finish that, come along.” 

We turned back the way she’d come to the tree that bound us to Tír na nÓg, near enough to where Oberon, Starbuck, and I had camped that we wouldn’t be difficult to reach, but far enough to be forewarned of any unwelcome visitors that might shift that way. The bound eucalyptus, a locked door to me, was a reminder of what I had lost. I hadn’t wanted to be too close, to see it daily. Of all of I’d lost, only my tattoos could be regained.

Brighid laid her hand on the tree. “We are still limited to the thorn bushes near Olympus, I’m sorry to say. The others have not regrown yet. But the Olympians consider your debts paid, and have sworn to do us no harm.” She glanced down. “Unfortunately, I don’t know your hounds well enough to shift with them. Can they take care of themselves?”

“Er, for the most part—”

<We can do it, Atticus! Just like with Clever Girl when that angry dude kept looking for you.>

<It was just you that time, Oberon, and you were very close to us. Brighid and I are going to be on the other side of the world.>

I turned back to Brighid. “This will be a bit more involved than last time I needed a tattoo repair, but not as long as a typical binding, correct?” 

She nodded. “A few weeks, perhaps a month. Gaia knows you well, it won’t be a new introduction, merely greeting an old friend.”

“Okay. Would there be someone who could check in from the time to time? I would normally have asked”—she smirked, and I faltered— “Owen. But I’m not sure he wishes to see me currently, or if he’d have the time.”

“I will ask him on your behalf, if you wish. Otherwise, I can ask Flidais for her assistance.”

An image of Flidais and hounds racing through Arizona flashed in my mind. “Would she promise not to take them hunting?”

Brighid raised an eyebrow. “I’m sure that can be arranged. You wait here, I will make the requests.”

With a binding, she was gone. She returned within an hour and proclaimed that Owen and Flidais would share the duties, checking in with the hounds every few days. I bid the hounds farewell and reached out for the tree.

After a brief stop in Tír na nÓg, we shifted to the same area where I had bound Granuaile, with much difficulty, a few years earlier. An apocalypse ago.

Brighid had clearly scouted ahead, striding confidently through the trees and underbrush to a thorn bush, sheltered by rock face and a small overhang above. Everything else had been prepared and waited for us.

We removed and neatly folded our clothes in the nearby shelter that waited for us. We then let the full presence of Gaia enter our minds and bodies and the binding began.

 

***

 

Three weeks passed. The bindings were completed around dusk and my arm, aching and raw, was whole again. I revelled in the pain even more than I had when my tattoos were repaired years ago, even more than I did when I was first bound and first understood the vastness of Gaia and my place in her service.

Brighid rose from the earth and donned her leathers once more. “I must bid you farewell, Siodhachan. Tír na nÓg needs me, as Gaia needs you. I do not wish to slight you; I really must go.”

I looked up at her, bare ass in the dirt and skin pulsing under my restored bindings. “Thank you, Brighid. It is an honour to be bound by the First among the Fae. I will not forget your generosity.”

The goddess smiled. “You and you alone prayed to me, to the Tuatha Dé Danann, for two thousand years. You have honoured us, and you have destroyed some of us. I cannot speak for all of us, Siodhachan, but you are welcome in my court. But I must warn you—the truce with the Fae is far from assured, since the death of Fand. Keep a close eye on that iron aura, should you pay a visit.” She disappeared into the trees.

I sat there and examined the bindings, the life force, of the thorn that bound me, and I let myself feel the entire presence of Gaia, more than I had let myself feel in many months. I felt the weight of her needs and the pain of her scars from Ragnarok. I lost myself in the interlocking bindings that twisted up my arm, flowing seamlessly from the back of my hand to the bottom of my foot. I circled the healing triskele and the knots of my animal forms. I lay down against the earth and wept.

I shifted back to the grove near Tempe, where we had fought Aenghus Óg and he had drained the land. I had cared for it at the time, and had returned every few years, even after the Tempe pack had cut its ties with me. Here, I let the hounds run free and warned them to be safe, and then I stripped off my clothes and felt Gaia’s presence.

//Druid.// Colorado’s feelings poured into me. //Welcome / gratitude / healing.//

I grinned and flung myself forward. The four legs of a stag hit the earth and I galloped through the clearing around the cabin. Leaping over a log, I shifted to a great horned owl and felt the wind lift me as it hadn’t since the day I challenged Loki. I circled the cabin and spotted the hounds rollicking a short distance away; I landed as a wolfhound and joined them. We played for a short while and then I shifted back to my human form.

“Okay, Oberon, it’s time for me to work. Take Starbuck and show him the sheep.”

<The sheep! It’s been a hundred years!>

“More like fifteen.”

But he and Starbuck were gone. I walked back toward the cabin, delighting in each image Colorado sent me, the growth that had happened in my absence and the work still left to do. My work. I sat on the new grass in front of the cabin, reached out to Gaia, and continued my healing.

**Author's Note:**

> I've spent most of my energy on academic writing lately, so I've been taking long breaks from any sort of fiction. But sometimes you just need a happy ending, and sometimes there's just an idea. I may also have some ideas re:Atticus and Granuaile, but we'll see where that goes!
> 
> (My copies of the books are in another city so please excuse any timeline errors.)


End file.
